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Guitarist Cameron Knowler surprised us all in 2021 when, only a few months after the release of Anticipation, a collaboration with Eli Winter, he released his solo debut Places of Consequence on American Dream Records. Compared to a soundtrack project, such as a Wim Wenders or Kelly Reichardt film, Glenn Kimpton was enchanted by the assured nature of the album, which he described as having a certain charm and undeniable power.
Today, Knowler announces his second full-length album, CRK, which is set for release on April 4th via Worried Songs. Despite being self-titled, there are plenty of contributions from Jordan Tice (of Hawktail), Jay Bellerose, Harrison Whitford, Rayna Gellert, Dylan Day, Mark Goldenberg, Rich Hinman, and Robert Bowlin.
Here’s what fellow guitarist and avant-garde musician Hayden Pedigo had to say about Knowler’s new venture:
“Pure musical expression pulling from over a hundred years of American folk history but still feels unburdened by the past and looks sharply towards the future of what the guitar can be. Everything you want from an instrumental guitar record is all here.”
The album’s lead single, “Felicity,” is accompanied by a video shot on Super 8 film by Steven Perlin: lettuce fields, roadside chapels, an old adobe prison, and the purple Gila Mountains. Joined by famed session drummer Jay Bellerose, the track nods to John Fahey’s mysterious guitar work while incorporating dusty, lo-fi drumming to ground the song in cinematic gusto, not unlike Hermanos Gutiérrez.
The accompanying press shares how, in the video, Knowler is shown walking around liminal scenes from his early days in Yuma, a town he hadn’t seen in over a decade since the abrupt incarceration of his father since the age of eleven; in this way, Knowler approaches this work as being therapeutic for his spiritual growth beyond the music. Astute listeners will connect visual landmarks to the song titles off the record’s tracklist, opening a portal into an expansive universe for the songs to exist in: the blistering reality that Yuma is “the sunniest place on earth” despite the darkness Cameron experienced there as a boy. Pushing past the well-known association of the town being the namesake of the iconic film, 3:10 to Yuma, Cameron’s telling invites listeners into the reality of the town, its stark beauty, and the colorful characters that animate its history at the nexus of the West’s expansion.
In his review of his solo debut, Kimpton notes how Knowler could “cram plenty of emotion and chutzpah into something as simple as a single string bend.” In the same way that Perlin frequently captures smaller details like the jagged edges of a leaf in a vast field, Knowler also draws out those small details in his music that illicit an emotional response from the listener, it’s pure magic.
Pre-Order CRK – April 4th via Worried Songs: https://worriedsongs.bandcamp.com/album/crk
